All posts tagged ‘SpinTunes’

Album covers for SpinTunes rounds three and four. Images by Matt Schubbe.

If you’ve ever been bullied, or know a child who has been bullied or is being bullied, then On the Matter of Bullying (Part One) and On the Matter of Bullying (Part Two) by Edric Haleen are two songs that deserve your ear, and a share. Especially if, as result, you’ve had thoughts of suicide, or know someone who, as a result, is suicidal. Be warned: These songs are a possible trigger and may require loads of tissue.

On the Matter of Bullying (Part One) and On the Matter of Bullying (Part Two) were created for rounds three and four and Spintunes six.

Edric Haleen decided to tackle a subject that has been receiving a lot of attention in the media in the last few years: bullying. He did this bravely and unapologetically; creating a song that resonated with many of the Spintunes listeners and participants.

Edric was not only able to outdo the excellence achieved in his round three song, but he accomplished something that rarely happens. On the Matter of Bullying (Part Two) gutted me. I cried. No, I sobbed. It both opened up a lot of old wounds, while helping me to feel not alone with some of my past struggles.

At the end of On the Matter of Bullying (Part Two), Edric leaves a very important spoken-word message. This message needs to be heard, and shared, often. It may just save a life.

It is time, once again, for my favorite songwriting competition: SpinTunes. SpinTunes was created when a group of geeky and non-geeky musicians were looking for a way to challenge and collaborate with each other through friendly competition.

If you are unfamiliar with SpinTunes, it is a supportive songwriting competition, consisting of four rounds, that can best be described as a mix between Nur Ein and Song Fu. Every couple of weeks, contestants are issued a songwriting challenge. This challenge can be topical, technical, or a combination of both. After a round is over, a group of judges rank and review each song. There is also a popular vote that carries some weight in the final score. After each round, a number of contestant are eliminated, scores cleared and a fresh round begins. The winner is voted upon by the eliminated contestants. Full rules can be found here.

After each round, there is a Ustream listening party. This allows all of the musicians and their supporters to get together, listen to the songs, and give each other feedback. All of the music is then made available, for free, via BandCamp.

Well, I’m out. I joined an online songwriting challenge called SpinTunes and only made it past the second round. It’s a light competition where the winner is…congratulated by all. The point is to share original music with fellow geeky songwriters. I had a good time and thought I’d share my songs with all of you since they were a little weird, and you guys like that, right?

The first challenge was Night Terrors – Write a song about a childhood nightmare. Include significant use of rubato. I wrote Monster’s Lullaby, making up a story about a baby monster being soothed back to sleep by a monster mama. It was fun getting people to tell me their nightmares and include them (so weird!) into my lullaby. Monster’s Lullaby by Rebecca Angel I scored well and went on to round two.

I Heart U: Write a musical Valentine’s Day card to someone OTHER than your significant other. When I told my friend about this one, she laughed, “Isn’t that what all your songs are about?” Ha…ha. Anyway, I went the Tin Pan Alley route and tried to play jazzy, which I never have before. It was a trip. Insignificant You by Rebecca Angel Again, the judges moved me ahead to round three.

Lucky Seven: Choose seven letters of the Roman alphabet. Now write a song using ONLY words that begin with those seven letters. I started listing things I liked and counting how many letters were in the words, coming up with MY TIGHTS. Seven letters and I had a song subject as well. Anyone who has seen me at geeky conventions knows my love of colorful and odd hosiery. I took the opportunity to share a personal side of myself, unlike the other two songs which were completely made up. My Tights by Rebecca Angel Unfortunately, I wasn’t up to snuff and scored in the lower side of the rankings for this round.

Regardless, I had a great time shooting a music video with my little nieces on my babysitting day. Check it out!

The best part about SpinTunes was writing the songs. I hadn’t been writing much lately and this was a much welcome kick in the ass. The hardest part about SpinTunes was finding time to record. My day starts at around 8am and ends at 10pm. I’m not a night person, but that was my only time alone, so I did my best in my 55 degree basement to get the songs in on time. The fun part about SpinTunes was the listening parties where everyone hung out online for an evening to hear the challenges. Unfortunately, I had a migraine the night of the third round listening party and couldn’t attend—so bummed!

I’ll be at the final listening party to cheer the remaining contestants. :)

Dakster Sullivan is still recovering from Megacon last weekend. This weekend she is looking forward to spending time with her family at home. She just finished reading the Last Unicorn graphic novel so a trip to the library might be in order to get some new reading material.

Rebecca is having a good time with the SpinTunes challenges. Her latest song is about how much she loves her tights. Wonder if the judges will like it?

Laura has finally finished a ghostwriting job, and haunted by the experience, swears she’ll never take another. This week she’s asking readers if raising a child without toys can be beneficial and asking herself which big project she’ll tackle next.

Chaos Mandy is looking forward to a lazy weekend. Besides Family Game Night on Sunday, she has no definite plans which sounds lovely right now.

Kris Bordessa just finished reading Cloak by James Gough. She’s now suspiciously eyeing everyone she meets to figure out what animal “enchant” is hiding in their skin.

Kelly Knox is planning to get in some time to read The Hobbit for the GeekMom Book Club, visit Seattle’s Museum of Flight, and maybe even take the kiddo sledding, but a cold is threatening to stick her firmly in bed instead. Achoo!

The other week, I wrote about my favourite songwriting competition: SpinTunes. The sign-up process is over and now the competition is officially underway. For a number of reasons, I am extremely excited about this incarnation of SpinTunes.

The first of these reasons is that GeekMom core contributor, Rebecca Angel, decided to join the competition! Seriously! How awesome is that?! The second of these reasons is that a lot of my favourite past competitors have decided to come back for more punishment excellent songwriting prompts. The third of these reasons is that there are a lot of new faces. And this brings me to the forth reason I am so excited, there are LOADS of people participating in SpinTune 4. How many? FORTY-THREE! Yes, 43 groups and individuals have decided to jump on board and sink their creative teeth into whatever the judges decide to throw at them. You can find out more about the competitors here.

And what have the judges decided to throw at them first? I think my jaw may have dropped when I read the challenge for round one. The challenge for round one has two parts. The first part is a topical challenge. The second part is a technical challenge. The topic that they have to write about is a childhood nightmare. When I read that, my brain began to flood with the reoccurring nightmares I had as a child, nightmares about my family being killed by Daleks, or flying and not being able to return to the earth, or crashing down the stairs. The technical part of this challenge is that the songs must make significant use of rubato. Rubato is a fancy name for a tempo change. There is a little bit more to it than that. You can read what Wikipedia has to say about rubato here. The song must be a minimum of two minutes long. It must be submitted by 23:59 EST on January 29, 2012.

After I picked my jaw off of the ground, the anticipation began to build. I really cannot wait to hear what all of the competitors come up. If all 43 competitors successfully hand their songs in on time, that means 13 people will be eliminated during round one. For more information about how eliminations work, you can read the full rules here.

If you are a songwriter and you would like to sink your teeth into this challenge, you are more than welcome to. Anyone, at any time, can shadow these challenges. Even challenges from previous rounds of SpinTunes. All you have to do is write the song and e-mail a download link to SpinTunes. Your song will be played during the next listening party and will be posted to the appropriate SpinTunes BandCamp album. You can find out more details here.

Good luck to all the SpinTunes competitors! Happy songwriting! I cannot wait to hear what you create when the songs are revealed during the first listening party on January 30, 2012 at 20:00 EST. I invite you all to join us in UStream here.

Now then, I want to ask you, what childhood nightmare would you write about?

My favourite songwriting contest is about to begin. The name of that contest is SpinTunes.

SpinTunes was created when a group of geeky and non-geeky musicians, who formed a community around The Masters of Song Fu, were looking for a way to ignite their creativity and challenge each other to grow in their craft, through a friendly competition.

SpinTunes can be described as a mix between Nur Ein and Song Fu. Every couple of weeks, contestants are issued a challenge and then a group of judges rank and review each song. After each round, a number of contestant are eliminated, scores cleared and a fresh round begins. The winner is voted upon by the eliminated contestants. Full rules can be found here. Challenges in the past have included writing a song from the point of view of a videogame character, writing a song from the point of view of a super-hero or super-villain, writing a song about a secondary historical character, and much more.

After each round, there is a listening party where all the musicians and their supporters get together, listen to the songs and give each other feedback. All of the music is then made available, for free, via BandCamp.

I was a judge for the first incarnation of SpinTunes and was extremely impressed by what the contestants had to offer. A good number of the songs created during all incarnations of SpinTunes have made their way into regular rotation during my radio shows.

Whether you are a seasoned musician, or a musician who is still learning, this friendly contest is for you. The community surrounding it is very supportive and will even help you with your songs. Many of the contestants participate in order to grow and are more than happy to collaborate with each other.

The first challenge will be posted January 19th 1AM (R). You can view the tentative schedule here.

If you are curious to hear about some of the experiences of past contestants, including the experiences of two of the current judges, or want to get an idea of what you are getting yourself into, should you decide to sign-up for this competition, you can listen to/ download my Geeky Pleasures Radio Show interview with four former contestants and judges here.

I do hope some of the GeekMom readers will decide to join this great competition. I will be following it closely and am extremely excited to hear what comes out of SpinTunes 4.

Over the years, I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to work with many wonderful independent musicians and song writers. In the last couple of years, most of my independent music library and the independent music I’ve decided to play during my radio shows has been acquired via the entries of various songwriting competitions.

I believe that entering a songwriting competition is an invaluable tool for any song writer/musician who’s either just beginning, looking to hone their craft, needs inspiration and direction with their music, and/or who wants to have their music heard, wants their music easily distributed and wants free promotion. Unless you are super famous and are already making loads of money, which is not the majority of music makers, this is probably you.

There is a smorgasbord of songwriting competitions out there for you to either participate in or, if you are not a musician but a lover of music, for you to follow and, by following them, support the careers of the people who need it the most: the independent musician.

Song Fight
Song Fight is MC Frontalot’s old stomping grounds. The rules are pretty simple. Once a week, a new challenge, aka fight, goes up. The musician has to write a song using the title of the challenge. As an example, the title of the last fight is You Are the Heartbeat of This Office For Sure. That means, if 20 people enter that challenge, there will be 20 songs with that as their title and they will be each based on that title. Every thing else is basically up to the musician. It is that simple. There is no need to sign-up. You just record the song and submit it whenever you feel like jumping into the competition. After the deadline, songs are made available for the public to listen to and vote on. You can find out more information about Song Fight here.

Nur Ein
Nur Ein is an off-shoot of Song Fight. Held in the Spring of each year, it consists of eight rounds. Like Song Fight, each song must be named something specific. Also like Song Fight, to enter the competition, you simply submit a song to Round Zero, once the competition is announced. Unlike Song Fight, you are given an additional mandatory challenge. The timeline is also more rigorous, the submission process is a little bit different, the way the songs are scored and judged are different, there are eliminations, and more. You can find out more information about Nur Ein here.

50/90 Challenge
On the surface, this challenge seems simple: Write 50 songs in 90 days. Held between July 4 – October 1, song writers try to write and record one song, every two days, for nearly three months. Weekly challenges are also given, but they are not compulsory. They are there to help you with ideas if you hit creative wall. You can find out more information about the 50/90 Challenge here.

The RPM Challenge
On the surface, this challenge also looks simple: Write and record an album in 28 days. To be more specific, you need to write 10 songs or 35 minutes worth of music during the month of February. Once you’ve recording your album and have placed it on a CD, you mail it or hand-deliver it by to the RMP HQ. After they receive it, participants will get their own page on the RPM website. You can find out more information about the RPM Challenge here.

Frankensong
As the title of this competition suggests, you are piecing together a song. What… what? After you sign-up for the competition, you are assigned to a team. The team is given a seed track. Whoever goes first, builds on the seed track and then passes it on to the next team member. The second team member builds on the seed track, plus what the first member did and then passes it on to the next member. This is repeated until each team member has finished building upon what’s been created up to the point they receive the track. So far, this competition has only taken place once. Hopefully soon, Frankensong 2 will take place. You can find out more information about Frankensong here.

SpinTunes
Out of all the songwriting competitions, this one is my favourite, and not because I was a judge in SpinTunes 1. The reason why this is my favourite competition is because of the wonderful community that surrounds it.

Rising out of the ashes of The Masters of Song Fu, SpinTunes is a mix of Song Fu and Nur Ein. Once the contest is open, any one can register. To consider yourself officially entered, you must submit a song to Round 1. There are four rounds in total. Each round is judged and reviewed by a panel of at least five judges. Those with the lowest scores, or those who fail to submit a song, are eliminated. The number of people eliminated each round depends on how many people successfully complete the first challenge. These challenges can be topical, technical, genre-based, point of view challenges, and more. Last week, I interviewed some of the SpinTunes musicians, past and present. If you want to have a good idea of what you’ll be getting yourself into by entering this, or any, competition, you can listen to and download the interview here. You can find out more information about SpinTunes here.

There is one more songwriting challenge I want to bring your attention to: The Songwriting Cycle. The reason why I haven’t mentioned it above is because it does not have an official website. However, to get an idea of what it is all about, I invite you to read about the results for Songwriting Cycle #1 and Songwriting Cycle #2. If you follow me on Twitter or SpinTunes on Twitter, you’ll find out when the next Songwriting Cycle will begin.

I am sure there are a lot more songwriting competitions for you to sink your creativity into. But I think this is a good place to start, especially if you are needing an extra kick in the pants to create or need a sense of direction.

Also, don’t forget that entering these competitions is free publicity and a way for you to get your music heard, plus gain valuable feedback from other songwriters, gain possible collaborators and/or have your music critiqued by a panel of judges. Entering a songwriting competition is just one of the many new marketing tools at your disposable. Later this week, I’ll give you more tools.